coast. It is also one of the most cosmo
politan.
All races and tribes of West Africa meet
at one time or another in Accra: Hausa traders
from Kano; Fanti, Ga, Ashanti, Mossi, Ewe;
Ibo houseboys from Nigeria, Kru boys from
Liberia; men of Sierra Leone, the Ivory Coast,
and Togo; cattle drivers from the French
Sudan; an occasional Moor; and the families
of most of these. They come and go by
ship, by train from Kumasi, by native lorry,
and by foot.*
Across the lagoon to the west is Korle Bu
and its African hospital, one of many proofs
of modern colonial interest in the native
people.
North is Achimota, educational center of
British West Africa.
Patterned after the
public school in England, Achimota was
established to educate the African to be a
teacher and leader of other Africans.
Accra's airport, a center of the vital trans
African supply route during the war, now
accommodates a few passenger ships each
week, and an occasional B-29 on a training
flight from Germany.
Offshore from the city, an ever-changing,
always-present fleet of merchant ships from
everywhere stands beyond the shoals to take
on new cargo and discharge the old. A hun
dred water bugs, each a 24-foot surfboat, do
the loading job, as they have for the past 300
years, driving through the surf with any
cargo from piled sacks of cocoa beans to auto
mobiles (pages 263 and 267).
Accra's music is as diverse as its polyglot
population. The African overtones of the
calypso, samba, rumba, and blues rhythms
give them a pulsing force that is rarely felt
in their more polished Western forms.
Recording the music of the different groups
presented only one problem. No African city
is a quiet place, and Accra least of all. Ex
traneous noises have spoiled many a field
recording, and we had no portable soundproof
* See "Dusky Tribesmen of French West Africa," 26
ills. in color, by Enzo de Chetelat, NATIONAL GEO
GRAPHIC MAGAZINE, May, 1941.